Live blog: Oct. 23 Apple media event

In just a few hours Apple executives will take the stage in San Jose to host a special media event. No one knows for sure what will be announced, but all signs point to a 7in iPad, new iMac range, 13in Retina display MacBook Pro and possibly a new Mac mini.

Bookmark this page and check back here at 4am AEST for a live feed of the event, as we reveal what Apple has in store.

Good morning, everyone! It’s 3.47am and we’re in the office in South Melbourne, composing an email to Apple asking that their media events in future are held four hours later so we don’t have to get up at an ungodly hour! (Just kidding … we love it, really.)

3.52am Macworld’s Jason Snell and Dan Moren are bringing us the Apple event live from the beautiful California Theater in San Jose.

4:00am

Tim Cook hits the stage right on time.

Tim Cook: Updates: the iPhone 5 up first

The iPhone 5′s a hit with customers. They sold out the first weekend, selling more than 5 million.

Most iPhones ever sold in the opening weekend, and most phones ever sold in an opening weekend.

Some very happy people in the video, receiving the iPhone 5. Maybe a little too happy.

4:06am

Tim’s reminding us that Apple also released a new iPod nano and a new iPod touch.

Together with the rest of the new iPod line-up, Apple’s already sold over 3 million units.

On to iOS 6. The team works hard to make sure most devices can upgrade to the latest OS. In just after one month, 200 million devices running iOS 6.

Fastest upgrade rate of any software in history, that Apple’s aware of.

So, Apple always makes a point of setting the stage at the beginning of its presentations. Recapping existing products and the like. This is also where most of the disclosures about internal figures, such as 200 million devices running iOS 6, come out — not during analyst calls or in quarterly releases, but in this early session of an Apple event.

4:08am

Customers have no placed 125 million documents in the cloud in just over the last year.

iMessage, too. Customers have sent 300 billion iMessages in the last year.

And this is Tim Cook’s part of the show, his place as the CEO to set the stage, even as the other portions tend to be done by his lieutenants.

28,000 iMessages per second.

4:10am

Game Center gets a little love. Over 160 million Game Center accounts.

Customers have now downloaded 400 million since the inception of the store.

There are now more than 1.5 million books on the iBookstore. Cover every kind of subject.

iBook 3.0 announcement?

4:13am

New version of iBooks. This contains a new reading option with continuous scrolling.

Also better integrated with iCloud. All of your purchased books show up on your bookshelf, tap one to start reading where you left off. New ways to share. Tap on favourite quote and share it on Facebook/Twitter.

Also supporting over 40 languages, like Korean.

Free download, available today.

4:15am

Macs up next.

For the year ending in June, Mac outgrew PC market by about 7 times.

Not just the last year; Mac’s been outgrowing for the last six years straight.

Apple’s not standing still, says Tim. They’re going to continue innovating. Really great stuff to show this morning.

Phil Schiller’s coming up to show us what’s what.

4:16am

Schiller:

Just a few months ago, Apple introduced the 15-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display.

13-inch MBP is number one selling Mac! That’s an interesting data point. I would never have guessed that.

Customers can choose a HD if they want, for capacity; others choose flash for maximum performance, up to 3x or 4x faster.

New third option for iMac or Mac mini. The Apple Fusion drive.

128GB of flash storage, with 1TB or 3TB HD. Fused into a single logical volume.

Wow, Apple is getting into hybrid hard drives now with “Fusion drive,” so you get the speed of SSD when you need it but it caches long-term storage on the cheaper hard drive part. OS fits in flash.

4:37am

OS entirely fits on the flash, so it’s there for performance. All preinstalled software fits on Flash, and as you migrate things, they fill up HDD. As you’re using computer, OS X figures out what you use the most and what would benefit from being on Flash.

You don’t use iMovie, but you use Numbers? It’ll switch Numbers to flash. All transparently to user.

Aperture photo import is over 3.5x faster on Flash; on Fusion Drive, near performance of flash, access to all storage without having to do anything else.